The present invention concerns thread storage and supply arrangements for textile machines, thread being understood to comprehend thread, yarn, filaments, and the like. In particular, the invention concerns storage and supply arrangements which comprise a storage drum whose peripheral surface narrows radially inward as one proceeds away from the thread infeed location of the arrangement, the peripheral surface of the drum serving to accommodate a plurality of neighboring turns of thread. Such storage drums can be coupled to a drive unit. A portion of the peripheral surface of the storage drum is transparent or translucent, and an optoelectronic device senses the degree to which the storage drum has been wound with thread. The storage and supply arrangement includes infeed and outfeed elements which respectively feed thread onto and off the peripheral surface of the storage drum, and the storage drum is provided with a drive arrangement for effecting relative movement between the storage drum and the infeed and outfeed elements.
Thread storage and supply arrangements are of course already known in a great variety of forms. An arrangement such as referred to above is disclosed in Federal Republic of Germany published allowed patent application DT-AS 1,288.229. A main problem with this prior-art arrangement resides in achieving an orderly shifting of the neighboring turns of thread on the peripheral surface of the storage drum in the direction towards the outfeed location. To achieve this, various rather complicated storage-drum constructions have been devised which very greatly increase the cost for such a thread storage and supply arrangement. The storage drums of the prior-art arrangements typically have, in the vicinity of the outfeed location, a circular-cylinder peripheral surface or else a conically narrowing peripheral surface which narrows in the direction towards the outfeed location, followed by a terminal larger-diameter outward bulge over the surface of which thread is pulled off. These arrangements operate satisfactorily with certain types of yarn, but cannot be utilized for the storing and supply of all types of yarn and thread without running into problems relating to the orderlines with which thread is wound onto and wound off the storage drum.